


Lost Apprentice

by EerieKing



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Delusions, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Past Abuse, amanda young needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26117719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EerieKing/pseuds/EerieKing
Summary: A short interaction between Amanda Young, freshly into the fog, and Evan Macmillan, one of its veterans.
Relationships: Evan MacMillan | The Trapper & Amanda Young
Kudos: 33





	Lost Apprentice

**Author's Note:**

> I just think they'd get along.

A young woman’s squeal of pain echoed through the woods in the fog. Evan tilted his head to hear it better, trying to place the direction and the voice. He was just returning from a hunt and he was on high alert. His nerves jangled like loose wire and the sound made him freeze. Evan couldn’t place the voice and it was close, too close to be contained to another hunt. This part of the Entity’s woods belonged to it and it alone. Somewhere in this twisting and directionless forest, the survivors huddled around the campfire their killers cannot reach and each hunter paced the bounds of their own memories. Evan was just trying to make his way back to his own. 

He had no traps set out here. There was no point to it. The lands themselves shifted and moved, so he had learned long ago they’d be rusted over by the time he found them again. It sure sounded like someone had been caught unaware by something and someone he didn’t recognize at that. Evan moved in the direction of the sound almost on instinct. Soon, Evan broke through a tree line to see a young woman in a long red coat struggling with something metal in her hands. The moment he did, his movement must have disturbed her, because her attention snapped up to him immediately. 

Amanda stiffened and took a step back. All she saw was looming shadow and a weapon. She wasn’t about to be caught unaware, not in this insane place. She looked him up and down, trying to make sense of it. She took the wooden mask with jagged teeth that hid his face and the blood that splashed up his arms and across his barrel chest. Obviously, by the state of the hammer dented cleaver he held, it not his own blood. 

They watch each other for a few beats, Amanda unwilling to make the first move with her hand stuck in a trap, in this place where she had seen another living thing for who knows how long. Evan rolled his shoulders, tense from both the hunt he had been called to and the standoff. Twinges of pain from the shrapnel prickled all over his back and he took the step forward to close the gap.

The big man huffed out a heavy sigh of relief when Amanda unsheathed her hidden blade with a ring of metal on metal, stepping back with her wounded hand and the trap that held it close to her chest. A weapon. That made this easier. She was one of his kind, then. She was a hunter. He held out a large hand to her, but she shied away from him like a wounded fox. Cornering another predator when they were hurt was a bad idea, especially if she thought he was dangerous. To try to prove he had no intent to attack, he held out his hand to his side and dropped his bloody cleaver to the ground. Certainly, stomping out of the forest splashed in blood was threatening enough. Then, Evan gestured for her a little more urgently, specifically at her trapped hand. He hoped she would understand. 

The girl with the long brown hair looked at her hurt hand, then back to the beast of a man in front of her, eyeing the brutal weapon he had dropped. He took a step away from it, indicating that he wasn’t about to pick it up again. For what felt like minutes, there was no sound in the clearing but their breathing. Evan let her have her time to decide how she felt about his offer to help her. Eventually, Amanda spoke to break the silence.

“The hinge opens way too far, and I was trying to fix it. I need both hands to reopen it.” She explained to the man in front on her. The metal she thought he was carrying actually jutted out the flesh of his arms, scarred but clearly incredibly strong. He could overpower her if he wanted. Amanda was not about to act as if she didn’t value her life. In the same way, he could have just rushed her, if that had been his intention. Amanda was pretty sure that he could take a stab or two from her blade and live. She was also sure he could make the same call. 

Evan nods, slowly and clearly, and took one step forward, hand still outstretched. He noted there were more of the strange contraption that had snapped on her littered about the clearing, along with gloves and tools. She seemed mechanically able, like himself. It could be nice, to have another trapper around. Amanda slowly outstretched her trapped hand, pressing her lips together to avoid wincing in front of this stranger. She was aggravated at herself that she had yelped and drawn attention in the first place. She had been through so much worse, after all. She knew better.

Evan reached out with both hands and held either side of the trap. It was strange, with no real teeth to speak of that he would have expected of something that closed like a bear trap. The jaws that held her were smooth, but when he cranked the gears back into place, it didn’t open flat. Instead, it set with the jaws together, a full rotation, with strange protruding metal bits pressed together. He tilted his head to one side, to make it apparent he was trying to make sense of it. 

One her hand was free, he let go of one jaw, and let the trap snap open in his hand. The top jaw flew backwards with much force, pulling the two strange protrusions of metal apart in a moment. He indicated the trap with his free hand, to show her that he was curious, before offering it back to her.

Amanda rubbed her injured hand and tried to assess the damage. Since the trap wouldn’t lock open, the force of it against her hadn’t been bone breaking – at least she didn’t think- but would bruise horribly and ached. She reached out with the hand whose back was covered by her blade, and gingerly took it from the giant man’s hand. His fingers were bloody, but she wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t put her off, though. He had been gentle and careful not to touch her hand, just the metal of the trap. 

“You got it...” She said quietly and he huffed in response, nodding, because the shape of the trap made sense. She wondered if he could speak at all. Maybe he had trouble doing so. Just one look up and down his shape made it clear he’d been through hell. She reset the hidden blade back into its sheath in deliberate motions. Amanda wanted him to see that she accepted he wasn’t an immediate threat. She settled back down on the rock she had been sitting on, dropping the broken trap in favor of one that functioned. “Do you…want to see how they work?” She asked. The reverse bear trap was the instrument of her salvation, after all. She could almost feel John’s purpose when she held them.   
John.

The next breath Amanda took came in a shuddering sob. She had been wandering around these woods for what felt like ages, sleeping when she could manage, and going half mad thinking she’s hearing voices. She hadn’t been able to stop the knot that tied in her throat when she thought about John, holding his hand out of his makeshift hospital bed to her, and telling her that she had failed her test. The last thing she ever wanted to do was fail him. She didn’t even want to shoot the doctor who he had chosen to help him. She desperately had wanted him to live, even a bit longer. It was that fucking cop Hoffman- it was Hoffman’s blackmail that made her do it. He made her fail John, made her look like she hadn’t learned. He would have disowned her, anyway, had he known that she had been there when Jill got hurt. That his adopted daughter was there when his unborn son died. The thought of it all tore Amanda up inside and she squeezed her eyes shut, tipping her head back to the treetops to try to keep the tears in. A wracking exhale escaped her, as much as she tried to hold it in. It hurt so bad to have failed him.

A heavy sound caught Amanda’s attention and she looked up, through bleary eyes, to see the big man in the mask has sat down cross legged in the grass. Evan saw some of himself in her and he sat to give her time. She, bewildered by this response, wiped away tears on her red sleeve. She sheathed John’s blade- it was an exact replica of John’s blade, wasn’t it? It didn’t just look like it was. The way she knew it made no sense, but the woods she was in made no sense either. The fog seems like it spoke and made figures appear in the corner of her eyes. She had no idea what to make of it all. It felt like withdrawal, all raw and wild and mad.

“I am…sorry you are here.” The gruff voice, hoarse with misuse, that came out of Evan didn’t sound like it belonged to him at all. He’d spent so much time silent and alone that it was alien even to his own ears any time he tried. Amanda startled, surprised that he could even speak. 

“Do you know where here is?” She asked, her voice faltering over the knot her failure tied in her throat. 

Evan nodded. The sound of what his voice had become rung uncomfortably in his head. The woman in the read coat’s shoulder relaxed a little. Some sort of answer awaited her, and that Amanda could take some solace in. Amanda wasn’t the type to demand answers immediately. She watched him wipe bloody palms on the grass, as if he were suddenly aware that he was a mess of blood. He didn’t have to worry about that around her. A bit of gore didn’t scare her. She had seen and done so much worse in her time. He then pointed at the trap at the ground and the one in her hands. 

Evan would be happy to listen to her talk about her creations if it helped her not to cry. He watched her fight it so hard and it had immediately instilled some respect in him of her. She was still a person, still full of her own sorrow, and she had tried to keep it inside. That was powerful.

“My teacher- he was like a father to me really. The only one I ever had that didn’t constantly beat the shit out of me.” Her hitching sob turned into a sarcastic laugh. Evan’s back straightened and his shoulders stiffened. No wonder he had seem some of himself in her. “John made this to help me. It’s like… a reverse bear trap.” She touched the metal bits in the front of the trap, remembering the taste of the blood and the metal. “These pieces go to the mouth, holding the upper and lower jaw in place” She pulled out the key to the timer mechanism, and let it count down in her hand, careful to hold only the back of the trap that would remain still. It’s what she had tried to do with the broken one.  
Evan’s eyes widened under his mask, but he willed himself still. The mechanical beeping was slow at first, but sped up, alarmingly so. All the time in the Fog, walking through half-remember pieces of other times, he’d gotten more used to the sounds of advanced machines, but they were still strange to him. He remembered the chittering laugh of Phillip when he walked over the trigger line for the bell at the gas station and turned as if someone was behind him. A small smile pulled over his scarred lips when he did, a real smile hidden by a false one. Phillip’s quietly attentive company was a small bright spot in the fog. Perhaps he could do that for this new hunter. Perhaps he could be a bit of solace. 

The beeping grew loud and constant, in a way that would be nerve wracking if he were someone else. Only the blood lust lent by the Entity really did that to him anymore. With a snap of metal, the arms of the trap popped open. Evan could imagine the devastating effect. It would tear the head of the wearer open by his mouth. It was a death sentence. He looked up at her and tilted his head to one side, to convey his curiosity. What did she mean by, her mentor made it to help her?

Amanda idly reset the trap and replaced the key back into the back of it, to stop the timer. She put it down, indicting her own mouth with a gesture, where the scars of the first bear trap were left. 

“I was the first person to ever wear one. You’d…” she managed a smile “You’d be surprised what kind of tool will save a life.” 

Evan nodded at her. This was a relatable notion, to be sure. The tool that changed Evan’s life just a key to a basement door and the will to ignore Archie Macmillan’s hysterical cursing. Even if those events eventually brought him here, into the fog, he wouldn’t change the decision. Amanda held the trap with almost reverence. The pain she felt was raw. He could only hope for her that the Entity wouldn’t hook its claws into that pain, into whatever she felt about this John, and puppet her with it. 

As he thought about his keeper, the creaking of its intervention curled against the edges of his mind. The call to a hunt, faint though it was. Evan watched Amanda’s attention snap up from the contemplative gaze into the trap in her hands. She heard it too. A hunter, to be sure. 

“Do you hear that?’ She asks, the quiver in her voice when she spoke about her past gone. She slowly got up from her seat, as if she expected to be attacked. Evan nodded from his place on the ground, heaving a sigh as he stood up. It was so soon, but if the thing that kept him wanted blood, he would spill it. 

Just as Evan moved to walk into the twisting woods, where the fog that would hide the shifting of the land that would guide him to his hunting ground was beginning to roll in, the scratching of the Entity against his mind vanished. He saw the young woman drop her trap to the ground with a clatter, her hands going to her head. She made a low pained sound that she didn’t seem to be aware of.

For Amanda, the creaking and scratching was deafening. She couldn’t tell if it was in her head or all around her. She could almost hear John’s voice in it, urging her to carry out his tests and she squeezed her eyes shut to try to hear him better. She couldn’t make sense of it. If only his voice was a little louder, she could understand. She would do anything to prove to John that she didn’t fail him because she was ungrateful. It wasn’t because she was weak. It wasn’t because she didn’t care. It was because she was betrayed. It was all because she just wanted to make him proud.

Suddenly, a heavy hand on her shoulder jolted Amanda out of her thoughts. The whispers were still loud in her ears, but Evan had stepped forward to pull her out of it. He knew too well that it was confusing in the beginning, to be chosen as a killer. The last thing he wanted was someone else, someone who seemed so human, to be twisted like he was into obedience. Amanda found herself looking up into a mask, but somehow understanding that this was empathy. 

Evan indicated out into the woods, where the fog was thickening. “Go. Listen. Hunt.” He instructed. She looked up at him and nodded, slipping out from under his heavy hand. She snatched up both a trap from the ground and the mask of the pig that she wore in service to John. She understood. She had to run another test. She was being sent for the subjects. She looked up at the man in the mask right before she pulled her own on, to become the Pig instead of just Amanda Young. 

“I’m Amanda.” She ventured. Perhaps he was another disciple that she didn’t know. He certainly seemed kinder than Hoffman’s arrogant ass ever was.

“Evan.” 

“Evan.” She repeated, confirming she heard him over the deafening creaking and whispering that he said he also heard. He nodded at her. It was strange to hear his name out loud. Phillip’s voice had been taken away by the Entity, in some punishment before Evan was ever able to meet him. Without another word, Amanda then turned and ventured into the fog. Evan exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he was holding when her red coat disappeared between the trees. He walked over and picked up his cleaver from the grass, acutely aware of the absence of the Entity’s whispers. He had done what it wanted. He had sent another to do its work for it. She seemed strong enough for it and he could only hope he was right. 

Amanda found herself trudging through fog so thick she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. She felt like she walked for ages. Her footsteps stopped crunching through leaves and began to tap against tile, without her ever feeling as if she walked through the door. When it cleared, as quickly as it rolled in, she found herself standing in that very bathroom where she declared herself Jigsaw right before all of this went to hell.

Then, Amanda knew. She knew this was her second chance. She would run as many tests as she had to in order to prove to John that she wasn’t going to fail him again. She would continue his work. She would do it as long as it took.

Even if it took the rest of her life


End file.
